On 08/03/2013 23:42, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:25:39 +0000, dennis@home wrote:

The government does fund helicopters where they actually save lives.
Like mountain rescue by the RAF, etc.

AFAIK all the mountain rescue teams are charity funded. No help from
central goverment, I don't think any run helicopters. RAF Search and
Rescue is part of the RAF and principly there to rescue RAF personal when
they crash, rescuing the general public is training. That's assuming that
the RAF/MOD continue to fund RAF S&R, there has been some talk about them
out sourcing it...

However the helicopter air ambulances probably don't save any lives.
If you think about it they are always secondary units to arrive and the
paramedics that are already at the sceen have already done the work to
stabilise the patient before the helicopter is even scrambled.

Complete and utter ********. Car crash couple of hundred yards down the
road from here the air ambulance was here a good 30 mins before the
paramedic ambulance. The local "first responder" ambulance arrived in
about 5 minutes but the crew of that are only first responders not
paramedics. What they can do is very limited.

So how many better trained and equipped paramedics could there be if the
air ambulance money had been spent on them?

How many less would there be if the NHS had to fund the helicopters?

However its your money to spend as you please, just don't try and spend
public money on them.

I hope you have an accident when out in the country side and a paramedic
ambulance will take the best part of an hour to get to you. Not an
accident that'll kill you quickly. I'd like you to bleed to death
internally, maybe a crushed rib cage and punctured lung. And just to make
sure it's suitably painful a limb with a displaced open fracture.


Same to you with raw sewage in the wounds.